


Rebelling Against the Farm Boy Heritage and Other Real World Tribulations

by EbonyKitty552



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies), The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Character Study, First Meetings, Friendship, Gen, Incomplete blurb, Pacific Rim AU, humanformers au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 09:06:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16870087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EbonyKitty552/pseuds/EbonyKitty552
Summary: Former "farm boy" Bee is now part of the Jaeger Program.  Great.  Learning the job'll be the easy part of the gig.Making friends and fitting in?  Yeah, not so easy.  Or maybe it is.  If you're lucky.  And not too picky.N: Just a small character study for an AU that my sister and I brainstormed a couple years back.





	Rebelling Against the Farm Boy Heritage and Other Real World Tribulations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiniKitty000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiniKitty000/gifts).



> No warnings to report unless you're allergic to gingers. However, I will warn anyone reading his that it's incomplete. Just a little character study of Human!Bumblebee meeting new people <3
> 
> The character designs for Smokescreen and Bumblebee were inspired by art on dA by rabbitzoro :)

Back home, dressing nice meant wearing a new pair of jeans, clean cowboy boots, a tucked-in, ironed white dress shirt and a very large, very shiny belt-buckle. Therefore, wanting to make a good impression on the men and women he would probably be working with for the next however many years, Bee dressed nice. Maybe _too_ nice.

Awkwardly, he looked around at the other guys on the bus as they filed past. Some looked not too different from what Bee would wear on a normal day: jeans and a tee with a sports jacket and tennis shoes. And some looked like they had stepped out of some sort of modeling magazine with their sporty clothes or leather jackets and styled hair. But he didn’t see a single belt buckle anywhere. Certainly nothing that he would classify as Sunday Best.

Worse still, they all looked at him, and he could see the light of realization and the amused quirk of lips. _“Oh look, a hick,”_ their eyes said, _“A farm boy.”_

Bee was leaving home to get away from the farm and the country. The urge to reach down and yank of his belt and stuff it into his duffel was strong. But there was nothing to be done about the boots. Forlornly, he glanced down at the pointed steel toes and stifled a wince. Why hadn’t he just gone with tennis shoes and a jacket?

“Hey, is this seat taken?”

Bee glanced up and took in the tall guy leaning halfway over the unoccupied empty space at his side. The first thing he saw was red hair. _Really_ red hair. It flipped up over a tanned forehead and matched perfectly in color with the goatee on the guy’s chin. Overall, Bee’s first impression was of a long face with a boyishly charming smile and a forward personality. Coupled with the general physique of an athlete, the farm boy was stuck between shoving this guy directly into the generic jock category to be forgotten or thinking that there was no way someone with such a friendly voice and open expression could be as much of a douchebag as the jocks he’d known from high school. Most of them would have sneered down their noses at him and only sat beside the overdressed idiot if they had no other choice before proceeding to ignore his existence.

Managing a crooked, slightly hesitant smile, Bee shook his head. “Have at it.”

“Don’t mind if I do!” The redhead tossed his duffel onto the dirty floor and plopped himself onto the uncomfortably stiff seat, bouncing like a little kid before falling back into a comfortably relaxed slouch. Excitement was written into every inch of the guy as he turned towards the farm boy he now had captive between himself and the window. “So, why did you decide to go for the Jaeger Program?”

Thrown a little for a loop at the guy’s enthusiasm, Bee tried to look confident in his answer. “It just sounded interesting…”

He didn’t want to say that he’d done it to get away from his family. It wasn’t really about the giant robots, though Bee would freely admit that he had chosen the Jaeger Program because it sounded better than going into the Army or the Marines. Maybe being a paratrooper would have been just as good. But, really, he just wanted away from the farm that he wanted nothing to do with and the family that expected him to settle for herding cattle and growing corn for the rest of his life. He wanted to prove that he was more. What better way to do that than to become the pilot of two hundred and fifty foot, human-shaped nuclear reactor that battles giant monsters?

“So cool!” the guy agreed with a broad grin, not even noticing Bee’s own lack of enthusiasm. “My uncle’s military, so I’ve always thought that was the way I was gonna go, but I never imagined I would have the opportunity for something like this. I can’t _wait_ to start. And we’ll probably get to meet the Jaeger pilots—the _real_ pilots of the first Jaegers! I heard Optimus Prime is going to be there. And Megatron. And Ironhide. Maybe they’ll even help _train_ us. Can you imagine getting to meet someone like Optimus Prime in person?”

If this guy had been a chick, Bee would have called it fangirling. As it was, the redhead definitely idolized these guys, guys whose names Bee had heard on TV a few times but barely remembered. Without prompting, the guy began telling him all the stats. So-and-so’s Jaeger was this height and this weight, Mark-whatever number with this special weaponry and had taken down this many Kaiju at these locations. How the guy knew all of this stuff, Bee didn’t know, but he could tell this guy was here for the Program, that he loved the Program. It made him feel a little shallow. He didn’t dream of being here because he wanted to be just like so-and-so the amazing Jaeger pilot, not like this guy.

It took a breathless pause in the guy’s rambling for Bee to realize that his mind had been wandering a bit. He glanced up and found the sky blue eyes focused on his face once again, curious and perhaps a bit more discerning that he would have expected from such a scatterbrain. “Hey, sorry if I’m too much. I know I can sort of go on and on, y’know?”

“Not a problem.” Bee wasn’t a man of many words. He didn’t have any problem with just listening, especially when he didn’t have much to say.

“Just checking…” It was the most hesitant Bee had seen the redheaded guy. Freckle-face actually looked a bit nervous—as if such a friendly and handsome guy like him had anything to be worried about—as he shoved his hand into the empty space between them. “I’m Sam, but everyone at home just calls me Smoky.”

“Benjamin,” the farm boy replied. “But everyone just calls me Bee for short.”

“Cool! Nice to meet you, Bee!” The guy—Smoky—grinned nearly from ear to ear, and Bee once again perceived a sort of childlike excitement and zest in his newfound acquaintance. “Figured I should know at least one person before we get there. Maybe we’ll even get to pilot together some time. How cool would that be? Of course, we might have to do something about your hair, but…”

Bee scowled, reaching up to ruffle at the combed, dark brown locks. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“Could use a bit of… I dunno… color and movement, I guess.” Without asking, Smoky had his hands buried in Bee’s hair, messing up the careful styling. “There, much better. The messy, ‘I just got finished working out’ or ‘I just rolled out of bed, who cares about combs’ look suits you. Much better than the… well…”

“You can say it,” Bee grumbled, plucking at his ironed shirtsleeves, the cuffs buttoned and tight around his wrists. He picked one of them open. “I didn’t realize this whole thing would be so… casual.” _Or that I’d be dealing with so many city people._

The belt buckle remained in place, but Bee managed to surreptitiously untuck his shirt and roll his sleeves up to his elbows. At least he didn’t look like a total loser now. Meanwhile, he couldn’t help but fidget under Smoky’s intense look. The guy cradled his chin in his palm and stared at the rat’s nest of Bee’s formerly pristine hair. “What do you think of mohawks? Nothing big, just a dye job and a buzz cut on the sides.”

Bee tried to imagine himself first with one of those ridiculous, giant Roman-helmet-looking hair jobs dyed bright blue. Not only was it ridiculous, but it wouldn’t fit in a Jaeger helmet anyway. “Uh…”

“Like, don’t even really gel it up, just leave it all messy and long-ish in the middle. I think it’d look pretty awesome.”

_Do I even get a say in this?_

“Say, if you could pick a color to dye your hair—like, a real color, not a hair color—what would you choose? Blue would look awesome with your eyes, though they’re also kinda green…”

“Yellow,” Bee mumbled before he could think better of it.

“Yeah, like something sorta gold-ish would look good with your skin tone. How much time do you spend in the sun to get that tan anyway?” Without consideration for whether or not Bee wanted to be manhandled, Smoky had his arm outstretched and seemed to be closely examining his skin tone. Bee was already naturally a bit on the tan side, likely some Latino in there somewhere on his mom’s side, but spending hours and hours out doing chores during the day had only made him darker. “I bet the chick’s love it. Exotic and all that shit.”

 _Not as exotic as your hair_ , Bee wanted to say and refrained, though his incredulous glance at the fiery red hair and the equally vibrant goatee would have alerted a less oblivious man to his general train of thought.

“You know what chicks _really_ love?”

Bee turned around at the unwelcome interruption. And sort of wished he hadn’t. There was a bright red and yellow _thing_ draped over the back of their seat. And it was smiling broadly, showcasing pearly whites.

“Confidence.”

Which obviously this monstrosity had in spades. Bee took in the pale blond hair streaked with red and orange as well as the matching red blazer covered in cliché flame designs. If it had been a legit leather jacket on a buff, broad-shouldered dude, Bee might have been impressed, but the guy looked a bit on the skinny and pale side, much more so than Smoky, who screamed stereotypical jock a mile away. The guy reached up and pushed his sunglasses—they looked very new and fashionable, sleek and dark—down his nose in that sort of “I’m trying to be cool, look at me!” way that just seemed ridiculous combined with the rest of this idiot. Big blue eyes peaked out at them.

“The name’s Roderick, but I go by Hot Rod.”

 _God, could this guy get any more cliché?_ Bee’s eyes moved from that face to the ridiculous flame-blazer and back. “Uh… nice to meet you?”

“I couldn’t help but hear of your hair troubles.”

_Please stop…_

“So, I thought I’d offer my advice. You know, as the resident chick magnet, I can definitely let you know what doesn’t work for you.” The guy—Roderick, because Bee absolutely refused to call him _Hot Rod_ even in his head—flashed him a cocky, somewhat condescending smirk.

“I was thinking short mohawk, yellow,” Smoky announced, seemingly accepting Roderick into their conversation without question or hesitation. “It would give him a bit of a bad-boy look, don’t’cha think? Definitely an improvement on Sunday church comb-over.”

Self-consciously, Bee ruffled his hair again, just to make sure it hadn’t mysteriously decided to lay flat again. “I don’t think I need a Mohawk.”

“You definitely need a Mohawk,” Smoky insisted. “And some tattoos. That would be awesome. Something to, y’know, show off when we’re shirtless and lifting weights or whatever.”

Personally, Bee didn’t think tattoos were necessary either, but it was clear that he was going to be ignored in this instance, especially when Roderick broke out into a shit-eating grin. “Dude, that’s a great idea! I definitely think my biceps could use some fiery awesomeness. Or a naked babe or something.”

The self-proclaimed former farm boy thought that this odd anomaly would only be weirder if he tattooed his pasty white skin with naked women, but he once again held his tongue.

“I kinda want… well…” Smoky looked a tad embarrassed. “Y’know that symbol that Optimus Prime and Ironhide have on the front of their Jaeger, the red one? I kinda want one of those. But only because I think it represents the Jaeger Program well. It could totally be an emblem for all heroic, world-saving, monster-slaying robots.”

Bee was pretty sure Smoky just wanted one because he was obsessed with Optimus Prime. He didn’t say so, though.

“What about you, Bee?”

“Something simple,” he replied shortly. “Black maybe.”

“C’mon, we should totally all get the Jaeger emblem,” Smoky insisted. “It would be cool, like a bond of brotherhood or whatever. After all, we’re going to have to stick together. I heard the training’s pretty rough.”

 _Stick together, huh?_ Looking from his redheaded “friend” to… whatever you wanted to call the human being that was Roderick… Bee couldn’t help but feel as though he was stuck. While he imagined he didn’t look much better, hick-ified as he was, maybe he would be able to at least get Roderick to ditch the stupid blazer. Then he would only have to be seen in public with a bleach-blond guy with red streaks in his hair and the gingeriest ginger he’d ever laid eyes on. Coupled with a bright yellow Mohawk…

Well, at least they’d be memorable.

“Sure,” he said, “Let’s do it. First time we get a chance.”

The pair—the redheaded jock and the crazy city-person with the stupid coat—both looked at him with brilliant faces and glimmering blue eyes. And then Smoky did perhaps one of the dorkiest things Bee had ever seen. Looking up towards the sky, the redhead raised a fist as if in victory and loudly cried out “Yeah! I’ve always wanted to be part of a secret brotherhood! Like the X-Men or something, y’know. Matching secret tattoos and shit!”

Bee resisted the urge to bang the back of his head against the window behind him and thought about trying to rescind his words. But he was pretty sure it was already too late, especially when Roderick released an equally loud and attention-drawing cry and demanded a high-five. Which Smoky loudly and obnoxiously completed.

The blazer-wearing freak turned to look at him with pouting blue eyes. “High five?”

Blushing to the roots of his hair, Bee high-fived the weirdo, wondering exactly what it was that he’d just gotten himself into. And they hadn’t even reached the base yet.


End file.
